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4876

Developer's Corner / Re: Amazon Allows Eliminating Ads on Kindle - Is this idiotic?

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 10:37 AM »

Seems pretty clear to me looking at it.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007HCCNJU

Screen Cap:
No Offers (see attachment in previous post)
Offers (see attachment in previous post)
Not sure if the UK one is different, but it's right next to the price.  If the buyer is going to pimp themselves for $20, I don't have much sympathy for them after the fact.

-wraith808 (September 21, 2012, 10:17 AM)

That's one of the problems... Complete obfuscation. A "special offer" is an ad. It's simply dishonest to say otherwise.

Language should be clear and unambiguous. That is far from it.

But... It is par for the course.

4877

Living Room / Re: Kids E-Book Ideas?

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 10:33 AM »

Another good option for the interactive books is Frotz, a z-machine interpreter, like used in the Infocom games.

-wraith808 (September 21, 2012, 10:29 AM)

s... o... teric.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine

But very cool!

4878

Developer's Corner / Re: change page size for default printer

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 09:50 AM »

Does this help? 

http://msdn.microsof...tings.papersize.aspx

4879

Developer's Corner / Re: Amazon Allows Eliminating Ads on Kindle - Is this idiotic?

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 09:47 AM »

The thing is, you agree to it when you agree to buy a subsidized device.  The same as people object to and have sued over termination fees for cellular service, but are in the same boat.  You get a discount- you pay for it in another way.  TANSTAAFL.

-wraith808 (September 21, 2012, 08:03 AM)

Seems to me that it's a bit of an issue of clear disclosure.

We see the same kind of "hiding" of the facts all over the place:

• Douchewads selling Audacity on eBay
• Non-labeling of GMO food (Sorry, but a half-jellyfish tomato isn't a "tomato")
• Obfuscating toxins in food with numbers (Hell Red #666)
• Telcos offering "Unlimited" bandwidth (1pt font text disclaimer that "unlimited = more bits than you can individually count out loud in an hour")
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

(Examples meant to be semi-humourous.)

There are MANY more examples out there.

It's not clear at all when you look at the product page that you are getting the product at a discount in exchange for getting ads.

On the UK page there is(was, when i last looked, i havent checked this week) no mention of ads - and the price is not that different from other readers or android tablets. It doesn't appear all that subsidised and you'd think that the "you must buy ebooks on amazon" tie-in is already enough to justify the subsidy.

-iphigenie (September 21, 2012, 08:20 AM)

Unsurprising. 

When I first got to Australia, I thought that there would be better consumer protection laws for labeling and disclosure. Wrong. The same kinds of deception go on here. I was quite disappointed.

Anyways, that's a bit drifting.

4880

Living Room / Re: Kids E-Book Ideas?

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 09:32 AM »

Checked - they have books for iPad/Phone. Haven't seen them though.

I think REAL software to have puzzles and games in a book that "make" decisions would be fantastic. e.g. Shoot your way through an asteroid maze to your chosen destination.

4881

Living Room / Re: Kids E-Book Ideas?

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 09:10 AM »

Has "choose your own adventure" made it into ebooks? Seems like a ripe area for some really cool stuff as it would be SOOOOO easy to expand on that idea of a guided story in software.

4882

General Software Discussion / Re: sublime text: some innovative text editor!

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 08:51 AM »

Anyone know what the trial is like?

-Renegade (September 21, 2012, 07:07 AM)

When I checked last (before I bought a license (which was back in alpha days)), it was: Random nag screens when saving.
And it surely is worth it. It replaced Notepad++ for me (although it will never replace my GVim). 

-Tuxman (September 21, 2012, 07:09 AM)

Thanks!

Nag screens are fine by me. I just don't want to actually try to use it, do some work, then find out that I just spent an hour for nothing as I can't save, copy, etc.

Anyone know anything more recent?

(I'd already downloaded it when I first posted, but was just waiting to see if it's crippleware before I actually try to use it.)

4883

Living Room / Re: Cascading grammar trolls

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 08:19 AM »

Topical, and perhaps anaesthetic.

4884

General Software Discussion / Re: sublime text: some innovative text editor!

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 07:07 AM »

Anyone know what the trial is like? It says no time limit, but I'd like to give it a spin for a while (probably a month or so), and I'm simply not interested in trying a "demo" that restricts the functionality, which completely defeats the purpose of trying the software in the first place.

$60 is pretty steep when I think that Notepad++ is so good and free, but if it really is that good, then $60 isn't really that bad.

4885

Living Room / Self-Portrait Camera - Casio EX-TR150

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 05:59 AM »

Gee... I wonder who this camera is marketed to?

http://www.casio-int...-mea/en/dc/ex_tr150/



I don't see an option for a black camera with skulls and pentagrams...

But, it's a novel idea. I wonder how many girls will buy it.

4886

Living Room / Germany Urges Public to Stop Using Internet Explorer

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 05:54 AM »

Achtung baby~! The Germans are marching against Internet Explorer~!

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49080060

The German government urged the public on Tuesday to temporarily stop using Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer following discovery of a yet-to-be repaired bug in the Web browser that the software maker said makes PCs vulnerable hacker attacks.

It issued the warning as a researcher said he found evidence that suggests the hackers who exploited the flaw were seeking to attack defense contractors.

Microsoft said on Monday that attackers can exploit the bug in its Internet Explorer, used on hundreds of millions of computers, to infect the PC of somebody who visits a malicious website and then take control of the victim's computer.

The headline was better than the article, but thought a few people might get a laugh out of it anyways.

4887

Living Room / Who Makes The Worst Smartphones In America?

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 02:20 AM »

Well, this is pretty much a fluff piece with nothing substantial, but it's mildly entertaining:

http://huff.to/S4W0q4

About two weeks ago a good friend of mine, in the midst of the stressful process of buying a new smartphone, asked me a question I'd never before considered.

"Who makes the worst phones?" he wanted to know. I didn't have an answer for him; focusing as I do on the good smartphones that I would recommend, I had never even thought about the dreadful phones that I wouldn't. This was an interesting tack, to be sure: My friend was requesting, in essence, a list of smartphone manufacturers whose products he could simply avoid while selecting his new phone, brands he could write off as purveyors of shoddy gear, in order to narrow his focus on the good stuff.

4888

Living Room / Re: Help scientists decipher 'lost' gospel

« Last post by Renegade on September 21, 2012, 12:29 AM »

Is anyone here interested in helping researchers organize the Oxyrhynchus Papyri? "Since its discovery, the treasure trove has yielded up some masterpieces of the age, including the comedies of Menander, the poems of Sappho and the gnostic Gospel of Thomas."

-Arizona Hot (September 20, 2012, 11:00 PM)

I studied some Ancient Greek as a part of a course, but it's completely out of my league.

I do like the concept of crowd-sourcing that though.

4889

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 11:46 PM »

Heh they originally got all grouchy with the pigs and finally someone "got it" and laughed.

-TaoPhoenix (September 20, 2012, 11:31 PM)

Make sure to check out the other pictures there. Simply fantastic!

4890

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 11:13 PM »

Just way too funny:

http://www.huffingto...-pigs_n_1877766.html

Man Pays $137 Traffic Ticket With 137 Origami Pigs In Donut Boxes (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

http://imgur.com/a/4fQVF

BWAHAHAHAAHA~!

4891

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 10:29 PM »

4892

Developer's Corner / Re: A Bonehead Programming "Bug"

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 07:59 PM »

@OP: Heh, you've only done that twice? I'm sure I've done it several times 

-kyrathaba (September 20, 2012, 07:27 PM)

Actually, I only *remember* doing it once before, and the other time I spent, well, lets just say more than 15 minutes. 

4893

Developer's Corner / Re: Licensing Free Software

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 11:18 AM »

^ I thought I saw that somewhere when I got into the whole licensing bit.  I use CC for my writing, but that's what got me started looking at licensing my software.  But looking into it, other than Renegade's and 40s suggestions, there doesn't seem to be much help for people who don't want to release the source. 

And the reasons for not releasing the source are valid:
1. A lot of the source is derived from code for other people that I maintain the rights to use- but not distribute. 
2. Other source is just not compatible with OSS, i.e. commercial components.
3. I've had experiences with OSS that I don't want to repeat- it's just easier to not deal with it, especially for something that I'm not looking to derive compensation from.

But people are so focused on OSS that they forget about people who just want to release free stuff.  IMO, the Free Software Definition shouldn't be synonymous with OSS.  But it seems to be.  Just because you can't tinker with use the source, doesn't make the software not free.

But that's a different rant...

-wraith808 (September 20, 2012, 10:56 AM)

You make some very good points there.

Add to it that releasing source is still more work. You have to pull out somethings, stick in others, etc. e.g. Licenses for other software used in it, etc.

Then you need to test that your released source actually compiles. How many times have you downloaded source and it wouldn't compile without a day and a half of work?

I put up one at Github here, but in general, it's just easier to release freeware.

4894

Developer's Corner / Re: A Bonehead Programming "Bug"

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 05:27 AM »

Need more coffee (or other stimulants) ?

-Ath (September 20, 2012, 04:05 AM)

Coffee is my stimulant of choice! Turkish fine double with milk and honey.

4895

Developer's Corner / A Bonehead Programming "Bug"

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 03:49 AM »

Ok, this is something that I have done twice (second time being just now), and it's really quite funny, though totally boneheaded...

So, I'm programming away and trying to get the code in this one method to work, and nothing seems to be working. I fart around doing this and that and still nothing works. 15 minutes or so go by and then it dawns on me...

Bug fix...

You've got to call the method first!

Anyways, thought that might be a bit entertaining for a few here. (Am I the only one to have done this?)

4896

Living Room / Re: For XKCD fans

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 02:41 AM »

From one of the best movies ever made:

4897

Living Room / Re: xkcd - password truth

« Last post by Renegade on September 20, 2012, 01:49 AM »

I love this comic .. it has made half the internet remember that one four word combination. I think what it fails to tell you is that if you have more than five of these random four word passwords, they are almost as impossible to remember as random ones. Unless you have some system to relate the words to the actual site, but then, of course, they are no longer random words, and the number of effective bits starts shrinking.

Btw, for all the patent haters (via NH):

https://xato.net/pas...ry-that-is-patented/

-Jibz (September 20, 2012, 12:35 AM)

And for those that do not hate patents yet, after you read the above article, you will. (Or there is something profoundly bizarre in your idea of what "non-obvious" means. )

4898

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on September 19, 2012, 11:12 PM »

One for cranioscopical:

4899

Developer's Corner / Re: Licensing Free Software

« Last post by Renegade on September 19, 2012, 11:01 PM »

CC lacks some typical clauses that you'd find in normal software agreements, like a disclaimer against responsibility for usage.

4900

Living Room / Re: For XKCD fans

« Last post by Renegade on September 19, 2012, 11:00 PM »

It works kind of like Google maps with lots of images at varying sizes, so there isn't a single image that you're looking at.

But, it was very cool!